View article

Climbing beans offer potential for sustainable intensification in the East-African highlands, but their introduction requires a major change in the cropping system compared with the commonly grown bush bean. We explored farm-level opportunities, constraints and trade-offs for climbing bean cultivation in the eastern highlands of Uganda. We established current food self-sufficiency, income, investment costs and labour, and assessed the ex-ante, farm-level impact of four climbing bean options on these indicators. Input for this assessment were a detailed characterization of 16 farms of four types, and on-farm, experimental data of adaptation trials of climbing bean. Climbing beans generally improved food self-sufficiency and income, but often required increased financial investment and always demanded more labour than current farm configurations. Opportunities for integration of climbing beans on small farms were …